At the link, http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/06/17/west-virginia-teen-arrested-for-nra-shirt-officially-charged/, is the story of a fourteen-year-old boy suspended from school for wearing a pro-NRA t-shirt. Not only was he suspended, but he was arrested and faces up to a year in jail for “obstructing an officer,” apparently because of something he said that offended the officer. Freedom of expression is dead in the United States except for the politically correct. A student would probably get away with wearing a pro-abortion t-shirt or a shirt promoting every kind of moral perversity, but God forbid the student wear a shirt defending gun rights. The officer claimed that the student’s “refusal to talk” kept him from doing his job as an officer. Now silence is punishable by arrest and a prison sentence.

Now I know many police officers personally–the vast majority are not like the arresting officer in this case. However, none of them appreciate having their authority questioned. To some extent that is understandable, but this does not justify abuse of police power. School officials also lacked common sense in calling the police in the first place.

The situation reminds me of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, when the dictatorial pig who rules over the animals says that “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” In the United States, we are rapidly getting to the point, and are most likely already to that point, that “We have freedom of speech, but some speech is freer than other speech.”

Like many Americans, I feel a sense of anomie watching my country turn into a totalitarian state. This incident in West Virginia, the constant surveillance, the rising power and increasing militarization of federal law enforcement agencies, and the United States military engaging in judicial executions without trial of American citizens through drone strikes–these are just the beginning of what promises to be the end of what little remains of the American republic. Sometimes I could sit down and cry. There seem no realistic options to escape a totalitarian state other than to leave the country, but Europe is moving the same direction. As a Christian, I trust in God that all will be well in the end. In the meantime, we can all love God, love our families, work with dignity, and do what little we can to slow the inextricable destruction of liberty in what used to be the land of the free.